Matt Grimaldi wrote: > >> Chosing a lesser evil *is* chosing >> evil - unless there is no other way >> out. > >No. It's still choosing evil. However, >such a choice could be understood and >possibly even forgiven. > There's a jewish saying with more or less the meaning that you can forgive evil that was done to you, but you have no right to forgive evil that was done to someone else.
IMHO, if there are *only* two choices, then one of them can't be named "evil". We don't have full knowlegde, so maybe we will chose the evil one, even when aiming at good, but that's how the world works. Say, I have a machine gun, I am protecting my family, and an armed man comes from the crowd and starts shooting at me. I have two choices: killing him and a bunch of innocents, or doing nothing and letting he kill me and my family. Real world situations usally aren't so simple. In this case, Israel had several options, and among them there were doing nothing and letting the terrorist kill innocent people, and striking the terrorist and killing a bunch of kids. But there might be other options, so this choice between two "evils" was still a choice of an evil. Alberto Monteiro
